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Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#291

Post by cjsuk »

emodendroket wrote: post #287
cjsuk wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They also rewrite stuff half way through and tell you it's the same project just to piss you off. Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation for example. I'm really disinclined to invest in any of their technology because my headspace is finite and I want to deliver business value, not change the unworn carpets once a year.

Most of the legacy stuff continues working long after it's the hot new thing, though.

Until you hit a bug. The one that killed us was we had to deploy a registry fix to 2000 workstations at hundreds of companies because they broke ClickOnce in IE9 and later. It still isn't fixed today. We still have to eat the administrative cost. Over time, that's a shit ton of cash leaked out on a mistake the vendor has made.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#292

Post by emodendroket »

flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #289
itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

>they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the problem of the lack of an initial user base. Is anyone else surprised that "giving away free windows phones" was not a recipe for success in terms of incentivising capable app developers? Most every app developer already owns their favorite phone because they can afford it.

Most apps make a pittance.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#293

Post by nathanasmith »

pjc50 wrote: post #184
jk2323 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is my understanding that MS has given up on ARM. Sooner or later there will be x86 based phones, which partly solves the "app" problem. They just run a regular windows on the phone.

I've got one in my pocket right now: Asus Zenfone 2. It just runs regular Android. Even has an "Intel Inside" logo on the back. Windows has never had great dynamic scaling, so trying to run regular apps on a phone would be a nightmare of tiny click targets. Metro apps would scale better, but that was the whole point of UWP. IMO they've given up slightly too early. They could have written an Android-on-Windows compati…

> They could have written an Android-on-Windows compatibility layer

MS had Android emulation[0] in the works for Windows Mobile 10 but then decided to cancel it citing it was "unnecessary".

[0]https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-officially-cancels-...

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#294

Post by wdn »

Microsoft got a chance to steal market shares and established themselves as an alternative to iOS and Android when they introduced Lumia 950 and 950XL. I really think the device were great. However, they made the fatal mistake on this, the price point.

They priced the 950/950XL same as iPhone and Android flagship phones. Yes, I do understand the 950 and 950 XL have flagship hardware, however, you do not priced it as your phone is in high demand.

If they priced the phones at 300, it would sell a lot more. Developers do not want to develop for an OS with no users.

Not only the hardware price was bad. The fees to developer was also bad. If I recalled correctly, they also want to takes the same amount of fee as Apple and Google. If I was Microsoft, I would not charge developer any fees for 3 years just to get them on board.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#295

Post by jannes »

simonw wrote: post #89
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #72

Windows Mobile is my favorite example of ecosystems being more valuable than individual user experiences. They came out later and really managed to hit a bright spot in between the customizability of Android and the sleekness of iOS. But without the deep app ecosystem backing them up, I'm not sure we're going to see any new players emerge in this current form factor of mobile computing. So far we've seen: - Amazon fa…

Don’t forget Mozilla, Ubuntu, Nokia and Blackberry.

You're still missing:

- Palm/HP webOS

- Intel Moblin

- Samsung Bada

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#296

Post by NiveaGeForce »

naikrovek wrote: post #128
amatheus wrote: post #48

Where does this leave Windows Universal Development? Hardly Universal if it’s only for Windows 10 desktop. I’m no Windows nor Xbox user, but do people develop using Universal for both? Are there other platforms right now worth targeting for Windows Universal?

There's still HoloLens, Surface Hub, XBox, and IoT Core and Enterprise. My employer writes UWP apps for itself, because we have all of these devices (even XBox) and write UWP apps for them all (because with the exception of IoT Enterprise, they're all UWP-only.) IoT Mobile is still a SKU that Microsoft sell, by the way. Guess what IoT Mobile is? It's Windows Mobile. It isn't dead, it's just not getting new features.…

UWP is getting new features all the time, it's the way forward for Windows apps and will stay for many years to come. Even all the default Windows 10 apps and stuff like settings UI are UWP.

OneCore is an internal Windows refactor that won't affect users nor developers.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#297

Post by garganzol »

dagaci wrote: post #283

One of the biggest failures of windows mobile was constant abandonment and reset, + all the mobile developers and users from the pre-iphone days were simply dropped with no path to wp7, + the earliest and devs of wp7 were all dropped in favour of wp8, + MS execs then approved of a slightly less damaging strategy with 8 to Wp10 but at this time it was already too late Microsoft could not solve the app-gap problem beca…

This. But wait, in order to further harmonize "cloud first mobile first experiences" they may be deeply pleased to announce one more important transition from UWP to OneCore.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#298

Post by cjsuk »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

They even held a funeral for their competitors devices: https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-win... This didn't age well.

That is sickeningly hilarious.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#299

Post by elsurudo »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #88
itsmenotyou wrote: post #30

I was working in Microsoft about 5 years ago and Satya's not lying when they say they tried everything to incentivise app developers. It was a big focus of the company at the time. For keystone apps they tried to partner with developers doing most of the work for them. For more niche apps they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the pr…

They even held a funeral for their competitors devices: https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-win... This didn't age well.

Heh. I was an intern there when this happened. In fact I think I was in the float in front of this one. To be honest this was blown out of proportion a bit. It was an internal celebration of release, and each team picked a theme. Most in good fun. In retrospect the funeral themed-one... yeah... didn't age well, and was perhaps in bad taste (I can't recall which team this was). It was just a bunch of overworked PMs, devs, and testers having some fun and blowing off steam.

Re: Microsoft gives up on Windows 10 Mobile

#300

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

emodendroket wrote: post #292
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they ran promotions for students and independent developers giving away free phones etc. But nothing was enough to get over the problem of the lack of an initial user base. Is anyone else surprised that "giving away free windows phones" was not a recipe for success in terms of incentivising capable app developers? Most every app developer already owns their favorite phone because they can afford it.

Most apps make a pittance.

What does that have to do with anything?
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